Today I bought some new reeds for my clarinet, and I noticed that they now come individually wrapped. They’re Vandoren reeds (well-known) and come in a box of ten, as before, but each one is individually wrapped to keep each reed at the ‘ideal’ environmental conditions before use, in particular during shipping and storage. I can see how this could be practical in a hot and unusually dry or humid climate (either extreme of humidity could cause them to warp).
Being in the south of France at the moment where it’s quite dry (although it turns out it’s remarkably similar to the humidity-controlled factory conditions for reasons you will discover below), I thought it would be a good idea to get them, even if I had to pay slightly more. Upon opening the box once I got home, I found a small leaflet about this new packaging:
Delivered factory fresh to you… wherever you are. Humidity is a strong contributor to the performance of a reed. This is why, at Vandoren, reeds are manufactured in a humidity controlled environment. Moreover, in order to protect the reed fromv ariations of humidity during transport or storage, we have also created the “Flow-Pack”, a sealed single reed pack. Thus, the reed you have just acquired is as fresh as if picked up from our factory in the south of France.
Wait. What? The south of France? Why did I just pay extra for this?
